In fact she was thoroughly selfish; as long as she reaped the benefit of his work she furthered his art; where she was left out of his consideration he must be brought back to her side at any sacrifice to him. This is not the stuff of which an artist's wife ought to be made; the influence of a strong-willed selfish nature on his weak and material one was not good, and his morale became lowered.
He felt this deterioration less than his friends felt it for him; even Vasari says that "though he lived in torment, he yet accounted it a high pleasure." It was one of those unions in which the man gives everything, and the woman receives and allows every sacrifice. Her family were kept at his expense, her daughter loved as his own, and if she were haughty or exacting, he suffered with a Socratic patience, thinking life with her a privilege.
It is to be supposed that a member of the societies of the Cauldron and the Trowel would appreciate good living. He was so devoted to the pleasures of the table that he went to market himself early every morning and came home laden with delicacies. [Footnote: Biadi, Notixie inedite, &c., chap. xix. p. 62.] A curious confirmation of this is to be found in his house, the dining-room of which is beautifully frescoed, the arched roof in Raphaelesque scrolls and grotesques; while the lunettes of one wall have two large pictures, one of a woman roasting birds over a fire, the other of a servant preparing the table for dinner. This love of good living, however, in the end shortened his life, according to Biadi.
After his marketing was over he turned his attention to art, going to his fresco painting followed by his scholars, or superintending their work in the "bottega." He was always a kind and thorough master, his manner just and fatherly.
Sometimes he and Sansovino or other friends lounged away an hour in the neighbouring shop of Nanni Unghero, where their mutual friend, Niccolò Tribolo, did all the hard work, fetching and carrying blocks and saws grumblingly. Tribolo often begged Sansovino to take him as his pupil, which he did afterwards, and he became a famous sculptor. One of Andrea's acquaintances was Baccio Bandinelli, who, as he thought he could equal Michelangelo in sculpture, imagined that only a knowledge of Andrea del Sarto's method of colouring was necessary to enable him to surpass him in painting. To gain this knowledge he proposed to sit to Andrea for his portrait. His friend, discovering his motive, succeeded in frustrating it by mixing a quantity of colours in seeming confusion on his palette, and yet getting from this chaos exactly the tints he required. So Baccio never rivalled his friend in colouring after all, not being able to understand his method.
CHAPTER IV. WORKS IN FLORENCE. A.D. 1511-1515.
From 1511 to 1514 Andrea was employed on the two last frescoes in the courtyard of the SS. Annunziata the Epiphany and the Nativity of the Virgin. The sum fixed for these was ninety-eight lire, but the Servite brothers augmented it by forty-two lire more, seeing the work was "veramente maravigliosa"; thus these two were paid at the same rate as the other five of S. Filippo—seventy lire or ten scudi each.
In the Nativity, one of the finest of his frescoes, we see his favourite double grouping, the interest in the mother being kept to one side, that of the child and its attendants to the other-a balance of form united by Joachim, a stern, finely moulded figure in the centre. The attitudes are natural, the draperies free and graceful. Old Vasari justly remarks "pajono di carne le figure." The woman standing in the centre of the room is Lucrezia della Fede; this is the first known likeness of her. There is a richness of colour without impasto, a modulation of shade giving full relief without startling contrast, a clear air below and celestial haze in the angel-peopled clouds above.